That's fine, it's fine, hold still.  He - doesn't think he can get out of here, not past whatever that is ((or Haru)), so he'll wait until it's done and then.  Pull his leg in toward himself, make himself as small as he c -

His soundtrack has been building up for a while, and it comes in shrieking with the legally-distinct Psycho stings - he jumps, violently, and scrambles, ineffectively trying to get up -

He is free to make a break for the bedroom door! The lights cut out in the process though.

He hits the door with his shoulder and tries to open it - probably it's not actually locked but he's not at his most coordinated and it doesn't feel like the doorknob moves very much on his first try - he doesn't (he's pretending) have time - time to find out whether he can fit under the bed.

He can fit under the bed.

The bed creeaaaaaaks above him.

Squishing him??

No, just making ominous noises.

There's a screechy scraping sound against the window.

Under the bed is clearly the safest spot available to him right now.  Back to the freeze response tactic.

Until - the soundtrack has the MIDI violins chill out into something more sustained and ominous, and puts the sound of someone breathing behind him, starting far away and getting - right - in his ear - and he extracts himself as quickly as he can without really bonking his head and with hitting his forearm hard enough to probably bruise tomorrow - the headphones fall off in the scramble - and it doesn't matter that it didn't work last time; he'll try the doorknob again - it opens; he shoots down the hallway -

- he is pounced upon. Tacklehug, stopping just short of hitting the floor before letting the hover go and dropping down the last half-inch.

So, an issue is that this is kind of hot.  It was already kind of hot before, though not in a way where he had actually noticed that it was, but now he's caught and it feels - he was already very physically excited.  He was literally running away, and he got jumped, and now is being made to feel very good.  He'll figure out how to spin this for his character in a minute but he needs to take a second to figure it out for himself - he'll start struggling, in the meantime, nothing that'll actually get him free but pretty darn thrashy.  He... Julien would be extremely upset about this, so that's the way he needs to feel (which is dumb, incidentally) - but how to respond from that frame without actually making this stop, because then he'll have to start all over.....

He has an idea for the character, nearly at the same time, on a parallel track of thought.  It's totally a thing, from Jeff the Killer in ancient creepypastas to sirens in ancient-er myths, that sometimes horror villains will be in some way enticing, or make you go to sleep - he's getting his references a little confused, maybe, but it's totally a thing, for a horror villain to have a chasing segment and then a getting-you segment that doesn't necessarily have to feel bad for the victim, because they're still dead at the end, and that's its own kind of horror, that it feels good instead of bad.

In any case, there's a set of actions he can take that covers both of these non-Bug perspectives.  He squirms and writhes and -

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry - please - aaaa!  I'm sorry -"

"- what?"

Ah, fuck.  Can he get away with just keeping going - no, this is worth risking the break in his momentum; he stills, makes eye contact with his head squished to one side.  "I'mincharacter."  Resume.  "Please, I don't know what I did I'm sorry -"

He has to do improv now? He was not aware this was going to call for improv. "Well, how can you be sorry if you don't even know what you did?" he asks menacingly.

Wow this is the worst.  He - lets his struggling get weaker; he is in fact already getting kind of worn out.  He hasn't really been feeling up to much, lately.  And the guiding feels really nice.  "I don't knooooow...."  He does, though, is the thing.  And it's actually kind of bad...

"Then I think you're not really sorry enough." WHY IS THERE IMPROV. He scoops him up in a moment of flight to set himself on his feet without letting his prey's touch the ground.

Wow he has no idea whether the fact that he starts crying makes him a really good actor or if he wouldn't have been able to prevent it if he wanted to.  Who can say.  It felt kind of volitional but it also feels pretty real.  Maybe it doesn't matter; maybe the point is that it doesn't matter.  Maybe the fact that it doesn't matter means he's winning.

The advantage of having tacklehugged Bug and/or Julien and/or a transitional identity from behind is that he can avoid having his face in view pretty easily and does not have to continually figure out how to make menacing facial expressions while fighting his own fawn response. "What do you think happens to somebody who's done what you've done, and isn't even sorry?" he asks, taking a step.

In a completely different tone of voice:  "- You have to stop, I'm sorry, I'm getting really turned on.  - Safeword.  I'm sorry.  I'm back."  Do NOT compulsively apologize MORE when that was extremely relevant to THE THING WORTH APOLOGIZING ABOUT.

- Haru puts him down and lets him go. "Sorry, I didn't see that coming at all."

"I didn't either, otherwise - I definitely wouldn't have done it and I don't think he would have either -"  No no they should still be hugging!  That seems important.

Oh absolutely they can again be hugging, just, seemed better to err on the side of not hugging when you get safeworded, not that this has ever happened to Haru before. "I should probably have explicitly set up a safeword in advance but fortunately the concept had made its way to me."

"And to me."  Because he's a FREAK and a PERVERT who had to RUIN their perfectly innocent magical identity-switching terror roleplay.  ...Well, 'ruin'; it got the job done.  Just, at what cost.  Whether or not this bout of crying started volitionally it is absolutely continuing regardless of what Julien wants.

Can Haru maneuver this hug over into the guest room where he can quickly get the toothy slotted spoon pasta server out of the way so they can sit together and he can grab Julien a tissue.

Yeah, totally.  That would be great, actually.  Dab dab.  "I - hi.  How are you?"

"Backlashed but basically fine. Wasn't expecting to have to do improv but stranger things have happened."